IBM Bluemix and Node.js Battle – Part 2: Preparing for Battle

Welcome to Part 2 of my IBM Bluemix and Node.js Battle blog series. In this post I’ll help prepare you for what’s involved in taking on the 6 challenges.

A quick recap of this Blog Series

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced you to the competition and gave a brief overview of what to expect as well as a link to the landing page of the competition. At this point you should understand the following:

The competition commenced on Wednesday the 20th January 2016 and ends on the 2nd March 2016

There are 6 challenges during these 6 weeks, 1 for each week, commencing each Wednesday

There’s a prize for each challenge in the form of Smartplanes

There’s a grand prize of 500 Euros at the end of the competition

It doesn’t matter if you’re starting the competition late, you sill have a chance to compete in each of the challenges

Signing up to IBM Bluemix and Coderpower

If you don’t already have an Bluemix/IBM Account, you’ll need to create one by clicking on the “Sign Up” button on the landing page. Alternatively, you can click on the “Sign In” button.

Once you’ve successfully registered and logged in, Coderpower sends a secure access code to your email, to verify your registration. You receive this email almost immediately

After entering the code, they warn you about the device (your current machine) you’re about to register.

I’ve deduced that this prevents you from signing up different accounts with the same device (To keep the competition as fair as possible)

When you confirm you want to register the device, they ask for a Device Name (e.g. MyMac)

You then have to grant Coderpower access to your IBM Bluemix Account

If all is successful, this creates a profile for you on Coderpower based on your IBM Credentials

Viewing and Editing your User Profile

To view or edit your User Profile, on the top right of the competition’s landing page, highlight over your name and the options will appear.

You can edit your profile details if you want (e.g. I changed my profile image, populated a few of the fields and connected my Twitter account)

Note: If validation fails on your User Profile when clicking on Save, any new data you’ve added is reset and you’ll have to fill it in again. This includes adding your profile picture 😒

Preparing for Battle

The next step is to prepare for the challenges, and you do this by working through the 3 discovery modules on the competition’s landing page.

Each of these modules gives you a taste of the interface that you will be working with in the challenges.

Each discovery module’s UI is broken up into 4 sections:

The Video tutorial – Top Left

The Challenge instructions – Bottom Left

The Code editor – Top Right

The Console – Bottom Right

Sadly, from a beginner’s point of view, the video tutorials are very confusing and cannot be fully relied on to complete the requested tasks. You’ll have to find your own way and branch out to additional documentation to deliver what they want from you in each module:

Hint: You’ll need to reference the actual documentation on Bluemix, which they provide links to in the Directions panel (Bottom left section)

Closing

Once you’ve accessed all 3 of the discovery modules, you’ll unlock the challenges that await you. (Below is a list of the 6 challenges that await you)

I strongly urge you to wait for my 3rd article, which I’ll be submitting soon enough, before starting any of these challenges. For now, work through the discovery modules a few times and make sure you’re understanding the User Interface as well what they ask you to do. You’re going to be working in this environment during your challenges and believe me, time is of absolute value.